


Temporary Accommodations

by Leonawriter



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: First planned some time ago, Gen, Post-Season/Series 04, Season/Series 04 Spoilers, sorta outsider point of view on Team Voltron, which is funny given the direction canon went in
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-17 00:58:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12354117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: Nothing lasts, is what he tells himself. Childhood, family, home, friends... all of it leaves or betrays you eventually. He doesn't see why Voltron would be any different, but it could be a safe haven for a while at least.





	Temporary Accommodations

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not even kidding what I said in the tags. Like, I even role-played something based on this with a friend, and the only things I didn't have back then, the only reason I didn't write fic based on it, is that I didn't know why he'd end up with Voltron, or what would have happened to the generals that'd mean he's alone. And a couple of other things that got answered by canon.
> 
> It's *weird*.
> 
> Also, I started this nearly a month ago. I've been sharing the scenes with my friends as I wrote them, but putting them all up in one 'page' here, except it's getting close to the end of the draft, and I'm gonna need more time and space for the next bit, so here you go.

His address to the Voltron Coalition is taken quite well, considering everything that had happened in the past, as well as the current fight that they'd all just barely survived. He's escorted down to a nearby planet's surface - not Naxzela, which everyone was still understandably wary of even long after the witch's ship had departed - by several Coalition ships, and a Voltron Lion on either side.

He'd call it a parade of honour, but he knew that honour was very likely the last thing on these people's minds right now, least of all for the son of the Emperor, no matter what else was going on. At least, however, this wasn't providing any surprises. They were all reacting to his presence exactly as he had anticipated on his way there. Cautious, yet grateful. As beings tended to be when their lives were saved.

He remembers Throk, and the easily swayed Galran masses, and wonders how long it will be until, once again, he is made into a scapegoat for someone's grand ideas, or until someone merely becomes the latest in a long line to consider the Prince as a bargaining chip to be used to curry favour with the Empire.

When he lands the ship - only one part of three, the other two left behind, one still on his flagship and the other with Ezor, Acxa and Zethrid - there is a sound that is almost like silence, but not quite. It's the sound of people  _trying_ to be silent, and failing as they whisper to each other.

It isn't as though he hadn't anticipated this, too. But he walks out, helmet still on because having just saved many of these peoples' lives or not, only a fool would walk out with no head protection where some might want to take a lucky shot - and everyone steers well clear of him, creating an empty space in which the other ships land, and their pilots walk out, serious and measured expressions on their faces, and he ensures that his own face, visible through his helmet, shows that he is suitably understanding of the situation he's found himself in.

It doesn't take much effort to look convincingly exhausted and, in doing so, harmless enough to be inoffensive to their eyes - which is rather helped by how long he'd been having to live from the part of the Sincline ship he'd been piloting ever since the transmission announcing that he was now a fugitive of the Empire.

He wanted to close his eyes. Let it all go past him, like the stars had as he'd floated not quite aimlessly in his ship. 

But the Coalition were expecting a  _Prince_ , and regardless of who his parents were, or what anyone else thought of him, he _could not_ show such weakness in front of these people.

...

Discussions and negotiations were a steady stream of person after person asking  _questions_ , making  _demands_ , needing to  _know_ things. 

Why he'd decided to help. The specifications of his ship.  _Where the other ships were_. If he knew anything about the Empire's current or planned cargo routes. What he knew of the mobilisations and the general structure of the Empire's military. The current status and whereabouts of Zarkon and Haggar. What he'd known about the general sentiment of the rest of the Empire toward Zarkon, or the Voltron Coalition. Why he'd become a fugitive in the first place. 

_"Hey, didn't you have people with you before? When you, uh, tried to steal that teludav."_

His blood rushed to his head, the sight he had of the table he'd been staring at almost blankly for the past what felt like vargas worth of interrogation swimming slightly in his vision as he tensed against his will.

_Realising he'd been compromised, that there was a traitor in his midst, that there was only one person it could be, not understanding but unable to stop himself from swinging his sword just to hope that the rest of them could escape and survive-_

_-pinning all his hopes on one thing, one thing that failed him, and as he turns around and hears only two words and only sees a gun in the hand of the one who, out of all of his generals, he'd trusted the most-_

_-if they'd wanted him dead, he'd be dead, but he wasn't and as Zethrid said, it was nothing personal, he could understand that, but that didn't mean he was going to sit there and take it, because this wasn't the first time he'd been tied up like this, and they'd have to try harder and mean it in order to keep him there-_

_-the other comet ship doing nothing, staying where it was, just waiting to pick up Zethrid as she floated out in free space toward it, leaving him on his own, aside from the radio chatter that he could still listen in on and a steady feeling of determination being an undercurrent to his need to keep running as far as he could, for as long as he could, as though there was anywhere to run_ to _, until he found... Voltron. And the witch setting off a planet-sized bomb._

He slowly became aware of the rest of the room's eyes having been on him, and breathed. Slowly.

"You won't have to worry about them coming after me and causing a disturbance. Meaning that there's nothing more about them that I need to elaborate on."

Several people frowned, and he could sense the distrust in the room deepen. 

"All right. Fine."

His eyes snapped to the one who'd spoken this time - the one in black. 

"Shiro?"

That was the one.

"Just one more question, and we can all go back to our  _other_ duties. And we've got a lot, after the battle we just had. Lotor, just how long were you running from Zarkon in that ship?"

Lotor's eyes narrowed. 

 _That's Prince Lotor to you,_ his mind so easily inserted into the conversation, what would have happened if Acxa had still been at his side.

"I don't see how that information is necessary to these discussions. I already told you how I knew that I might be needed here. How long I travelled before that has no bearing on anything whatsoever."

Very nearly all of the ones present who were in Paladin armour of some sort shared some look, communicating some idea that he wasn't privy to. Meaning that something he had said or done had given them something to think about, whether he liked it or not.

It was more of a relief than he could remember having in these past few quintants when they dismissed him, free to roam as long as he didn't stray from the encampment either planetside or not, without telling anyone.

It meant that he could lean against a wall, slide down to the ground, and reflect on how, exactly, his situation had become as bad as it had.

...

Working his way through the rank and file of the Voltron Coalition was, Lotor mused as he did so, much the same as dealing with the rank and file of the Empire. Both were rather more informal with each other than they were with him, and both tended to look at him with thinly veiled distrust. The main difference being that there were far fewer formalities here even between the ranks and that the leaders were barely distinguishable from the ones they served alongside.

At least the distrust that came from a single look at his armour or the mention of his name was something he could handle after opening his eyes and finding that several vargas had passed, if he'd read the alignment of the sun and stars in the sky correctly for a planet of this size and position.

"Oh, uh, hey. Didn't expect to see you here."

For a moment he couldn't place the voice, but when he looked up it became obvious. It belonged to the Yellow Paladin - Hunk, he remembered someone saying his name was. 

'Here' happened to be where they'd started to load food and other rations back into the various cargo ships that served as the majority of their fleet, with only a fraction still left ready to hand out. The Paladin himself was working on both sides of the operation, helmet off and rather bemused at Lotor's presence.

"Well, considering I can't exactly leave entirely, I was bound to turn up somewhere sooner or later," he said, deadpan. And it was true that he'd wandered past several other places before his feet - and, what he would not admit aloud, his stomach - had taken him here. "It isn't exactly a large area to have free reign of."

"Haha, no! I guess not. Oh, uh, we were all told if we saw you, we should pass on a message. Shiro'd wanted to say earlier but then things happened, and we got busy, and, well - we kinda all agreed it'd be best if you came with us."

He briefly remembered Zethrid saying  _nothing personal_ before dragging himself back into the moment. 

"Of course."

"Yeah, so," Hunk starts before picking up a crate and piling it into the back of a ship, "You and that, uh, Sincline ship of yours? That's what it's called, right? You'll be on the Castle. With us. Which is probably going to be really awkward given how things went between Allura and Keith, and Allura  _likes_ Keith. Though, you did save all our lives, so you've got that going for you, at least. So you can't be all bad."

He clamped down on the part of him that wanted to throw appearances out of the window and reach for one of those ration bars, or a juice box, before they all disappeared.

"So you want to have me where you can see me."

A part of him itched to find his way back to his ship and get out, get to somewhere unoccupied by either the Empire  _or_ Voltron, but logically he knew that this would never work. For one thing, it would undo all of the hard work he'd put into the earlier negotiations. For another, the  _only_ part of known space that wasn't controlled by his father, was protected by the Voltron Coalition. It was as simple as that.

And then, of course, there was the fact that it did, ultimately, make sense.

"Er, kind of, yeah? I mean, that was brought up. Quite a lot. In a friends close, enemies closer, sort of way. But actually the thing that did it was me and Pidge remembering how Zarkon's after you, and we really don't want you bringing down the main fleet on any of our bases that can't handle that. And we've got a teludav, so there's more of a chance that running away might actually, uh... work."

Lotor blinked, trying to make their reasoning fit with what he knew of them, only to find his mind reacting sluggishly.

"How long until we depart?"

"A few more vargas, I think? We still have to finish packing everything away and making sure everyone's okay to travel so soon." Hunk paused, looking at him in a way that made him feel something was being calculated behind those eyes. "Hey, are you okay? No offence dude, but you keep staring at the food, and if you're hungry, all you need is to pick it up. Even if we don't like you none of us are gonna starve you or anything."

Ah. So that was it.

He would have felt more offended, more defensive of the idea that he might be being  _pitied_ by these people, if it weren't for the ever-present wariness in the Paladin's eyes, and the way Hunk kept watching him, as though he wanted to know exactly what Lotor was going to do next.

He grabbed a ration bar. Opened it, and bit down. Forced himself to chew slowly. The Paladin didn't stop watching until he'd finished his second, and he didn't leave until he was sure that his movements couldn't be reported on.

...

"Okay, so here we have- what?"

Lotor had put up a hand to pause the Paladin in blue before he could get into the swing of whatever he was about to say before they'd even managed five paces into his supposed 'tour' of the Castle of Lions.

"Apologies for interrupting, but - I feel the need to ask a question."

"Uh, okay then?"

"You are the Red Paladin, am I correct?"

It had been his prior assumption that this person was the Blue Paladin, before he'd seen him come out of the Red Lion not too long ago, and seen the Red Paladin's bayard in his hand.

"What? Oh, right. See, I used to be in Blue, but then Shiro disappeared. So someone else had to fly Black for a while - that was Keith, who's usually in Red, so then I ended up taking his spot again, and Allura took Blue. Actually... that's kind of how you found us. You know, back when you flew circles around us on that gas planet."

"Thayserix," Lotor corrected, attempting to sort out the information in his head, and not being completely successful with it. He was beginning to regret asking.

"Right, that." The Paladin looked around, shrugged, and continued from before. "Anyway, this is obviously the shuttle bay, where ships other than the Lions go. There used to be another one, but then Keith and Allura blew it up. Lucky for you, that means there's just enough space for your, uh... _Sincline_ ship."

They started moving again, the Paladin - far easier to just call him  _that_ rather than attempt to be specific as to which Lion he was supposed to be the pilot of - leading him out into the corridors of the castle. And it was a good thing he had a guide, as if he had been left to his own devices, he might have become lost in a short matter of time, given how similar so many of these halls appeared.

"This is the training room, so you can fight and things that aren't us. It can also do all sorts of cool stuff."

More than training, he was curious as to whether they would be able to replace the weapons that he had lost, back on his personal ship, that he had not been able to take with him. It had seemed such a small thing during negotiations, when all he'd cared about was ensuring that he wasn't about to be paraded around as a high profile hostage and then killed as he attempted to escape.

"You say that, and yet you've been walking in front of me all of this time." 

The Paladin shrugged. 

"Uh,  _you_ were the one who saved everyone's lives back there just a few hours ago? Vargas. Whatever. I really don't think someone who's just done that would shoot or stab me in the back. It just doesn't make sense. Besides, if you were in front of me then I'd have to be telling you where to go all the time, and that'd take way longer."

He took a moment to let the words sink in - the idea that they didn't think that he would so easily turn on them, just as he had Narti, just as Acxa and Zethrid and Ezor had on him. 

Treachery and backstabbing was the Galra way as much as anything, whether it was behind closed doors in the highest ranks of the commanders, or on a meteor out in space. Perhaps they simply weren't aware of that.

"This is the kitchen! For, y'know, when you need to find the food goo machine at three am because what you wanted was Hunk's cooking but Hunk isn't awake."

He blinked, unsure of whether 'food goo' was worth waking up for at what sounded like halfway through the night cycle, among other questionable things in that sentence.

"I'll have to take your word on that."

"Oh, trust me. In a few days' time, you'll be hooked on Hunk's cooking - Galra prince or not."

More hallways, more bright lights on the walls, the ceilings, and more rooms. One was mostly empty aside from soft seats. One was small, dark, and didn't have much in, and his guide didn't have much to say about it other than to not disturb whatever was there, so Lotor could only assume it was something of great importance. Another was less a room and more an indoor area that seemed to be based on somewhere planetside, occupied only by one unfamiliar creature that made loud noises and was apparently called a 'Kaltenecker'. And then-

"Lance?"

They stopped at the presence of someone else in the hall. Dressed in the black outfit of the Blade, but shorter and not seeming to be Galran just going by appearance. Noteworthy, considering all of the intelligence they'd been able to collect on the Blade of Marmora-

"Keith! I thought you were still with..."

"It was decided it'd be better if I stayed back here with you guys at least for a while, remember? Everyone's going back over old intel trying to figure out what it actually meant now that we know not everything we were investigating was because of Lotor," the Blade, Keith - which was certainly interesting news, if it was the same Keith that Lance had been referring to earlier - said, sparing him a glance.

Lotor said nothing. It had hardly been his own fault that the Paladins had automatically assumed that anything that the empire was doing, was on his prerogative. Not when Haggar had still been at its heart, and as he had said in their negotiations, his own main interest had been the construction of the Sincline ships. 

"Right, well... I've just been giving him the tour. Nothing dangerous in just letting him know where things are, right?"

"Er... no, I guess not." More odd looks. A thought, a memory, tickled in the back of his mind, but then danced away from his grasp when he tried to reach for it. "Allura's waiting for both of you, though. She wants him where she can see him, I think."

He saw a shared look. Several. Not all of which he could hope to decipher. Often interspersed between what seemed to be good-natured teasing between teammates that had an edge to it, an undercurrent of some kind. 

Something he remembered from when Acxa had returned from the mission he had sent her on to harvest scaultrite-

Lotor stumbled, going light-headed for a moment. Righted himself and carried on almost without any hesitation, yet still caught both the Blade and the Paladin looking at him, having noticed.

_It has to be the lighting here that's making me disoriented. It's so bright._

...

He wakes up in the middle of the night cycle, struggling to breathe evenly and in a cold sweat, eyes unable to focus for a good few dobashes, and for most of that, unable to.

He still remembered the feeling of his ship rocking as he was hit by another blast from his father's fighters. It only made sense that his subconscious had convinced him that if he attempted to relax and sleep, then he would suffer the same consequences as he had before.

Time allowed him to recognise the room as the one that had been assigned to him. Not too far from the Paladins, most likely so that they could know that he wasn't getting up to something suspicious on the other end of the castle. An ordinary room. Small, but with far more comfort and amenity than he had expected. Far more than he could have hoped for from the Empire, if he they had deigned to keep him alive.

The transmission, in his father's own voice, the first sign of him to the rest of the fleet since Voltron had put him out of commission some phoebs earlier, stuck in his memory. Telling every soldier and commander and drone alike that he was to be  _killed on sight_. 

A room, even a prisoner's cell, would have been a luxury. And here, he was  _alive_. 

He looked over to the wall, where the bulkier aspects of his armour were hung or resting on the floor, ready for him to put them on again and defend himself at a moment's notice, untouched. The door still shut. No sign of any sounds from outside, other than something he could just about place as.... he suspected someone was snoring, though he couldn't yet tell who. The sound itself, though, was far too familiar from the times he'd had to sleep in direct proximity with his generals.

He lay back down, back to the wall and able to face the door should it open, and closed his eyes again, knowing that even fitful sleep was better than no sleep.

_They had any number of opportunities to have me dead just today. A few more hours won't make much difference._

On top of everything else, his shoulders, arms, and wrists still ached. The pain, coming in waves, he didn't mind. It reminded him that despite everyone's best efforts, he was alive, and he was, at least, not anyone's prisoner.

...

He had been expecting to have the Paladins wish to continue their discussions, negotiations and keep questioning him for more details the next day, but those expectations were subverted when he exited his room, armour on, to the sounds of the castle's other occupants seeming to have been awake and up for quite some time already, with a racing of feet in one direction, and shouting coming from another audible even before he opened his door.

It was the Paladin in the blue armour who stopped just long enough to tell him that the princess wanted him down on ground level, by which he meant they were on a planet and picking up a few more rebels who'd lost their fighters and/or crashed planetside as well as more injured, and they were taking them back to a better base of operations.

Things planetside here were rather more frantic than they had been on the one on which they'd had their first face-to-face meeting. More people were rushing around, and he could see more remnants of downed ships that would never be salvaged. This was clearly not somewhere that any of these people had planned to stay in.

The princess was not all that hard to find, given her pink armour and the way that she tended to be the centre of both operations and attention wherever she went. In this case, she was surrounded by numerous stacks of supplies, some of which were being piled onto a hovercart by the Yellow Paladin, Hunk. Her head tilted over toward him as he walked closer to her position, her expression, given she wasn't wearing her helmet, easily read. Narrowed eyes and hard lines toward him - contrasting with the far softer expressions she saved for all others.

"Lotor. I was wondering when you'd be able to join us."

"I wasn't aware that anything had started happening. I _had_ been under the impression that if something came up that I would also be informed."

"Which still stands, I assure you. But this is a routine extraction operation, and your presence was hardly an emergency. However, now that you are here, it would be appreciated if you would give Hunk a hand with these crates."

He stared at her for a few seconds, and then at where Hunk was working, caught between indignation at being assigned such menial work and the inability to understand why they would trust him with such a thing when even just a few vargas ago, they had been enemies.

The princess' expression grew, if anything, colder during his hesitation. 

"You may have saved all of our lives just yesterday, but do not expect one action to mean that you are excused from everything else. If you are going to be, as you were willing enough to suggest, a part of this coalition, then you  _will_ participate in it, just as the other Paladins do, just as those capable from the planets that we have freed do, just as those rebels who work with us do, and just as I do. No one is of any greater or lesser importance here. We all try to help each other. That, is what the Voltron Coalition is about."

Her small speech had attracted a similarly small crowd of onlookers, and even with those who were not openly staring, there was a silence that Lotor was all too familiar with that suggested that everyone present were waiting to see what would happen next.

Without saying a word, he walked past her, over to where Hunk was, and began to copy the Paladin's actions. The crates were heavy and weighed on his arms and shoulders, but he gritted his teeth and ignored the shooting aches, hearing the buzz of conversation and movement and the princess' orders and demands begin once again.

At one point they ran out of crates, and he was shuffled onto another group, one that was scavenging supplies from the downed rebel ships - not built to be fighters, any of them, a thought that made him miss his custom fighter, even with the Sincline ship safely in the castle's hangar - and when they had searched the way through one ship, they moved on to the next.

None of them talked very much, but then again, he assumed that they were doing the same as he was, and saving their breath for working around their injuries, moving through difficult areas, and shouting to the search team when something - sometimes, someone - of importance was found.

No one ever seemed grateful to see him, but then he hardly expected them to. But on the other hand, everyone seemed to accept his presence after a while even if they weren't happy with it, their work far more important than the fugitive Prince of the Galra Empire. 

...

It took several more quintants - all full of the moving of supplies and refugees, which he was roped into being involved with at every turn - to rebalance his sleep cycle, both after the lack of sleep while evading his father's forces, and to the slightly different cycle that the castle seemed to use. His sleep remained troubled, but after the first night he hadn't woken up unexpectedly again.

This, however, was the first time he'd been woken up to the sound of alarms blaring, panic beginning to settle into his bones before he remembered where he was, upon which nausea took over as he automatically pulled on his armour and made his way to the bridge, still having to remember which corridor was the right one to take, and having to double back on himself  _twice_.

The Paladins were already gone at that point, leaving only the three of them in the castle with the monitors to show that they were facing down thankfully just  _one_ of the empire's cruisers, albeit one that was sending out enough fighters that if what they were attacking were anything other than Voltron, then their target would be surely decimated.

Coran, despite the lack of formality or the sheer eccentricity, was in charge of telling the Paladins and his princess everything that they needed about their battlefield, and had spared Lotor as he entered not even a glance. 

Keith, in his Marmora armour, was stood just behind the Red Paladin's chair - interesting, perhaps, given that he no longer currently held that position in the team, but then, perhaps not so much considering how well he knew that habits such as those could be hard to break. Pale, pink hands clenched around the back of the seat in front of him as he watched the ongoing fight.

"Can't you  _do_ anything?"

He raised a single brow and gave a tight smile.

"And do what, exactly? I came to you for protection because as you know, if anyone in the empire, no matter how distant the outpost, saw that I was present, then I would rapidly become their new target. Unless that is what you want - for me to become bait so that your friends can escape from each encounter free of harm?"

"No, I just - never mind. Forget I said anything."

There was enough of a lull in the fighting from a large number of fighters being immobilised that the Lions - formidable up close, somehow even more so from a distance when he could see exactly what they were capable of, a sentiment that had hardly changed between seeing two of his generals fight them and now, relying on them for safety - were able to expend the necessary time on flying in formation, and coming back as Voltron.

Five pieces, coming together as one. 

Five  _pilots_.

Keith visibly relaxed as the massive robot broke apart once again in order to head back to the castle, as did Coran, who was congratulating the Paladins on a job well done.

Lotor should be feeling relieved as well, relaxing at the fact that they were doing exactly what he had hoped they would, that such an obstacle would prove no true threat, but the stress continued to well up inside of him, for seemingly no reason.

...

It takes time to pace through the long, empty halls of the castle, each one imposing and bearing down on him and nowhere assuaging the restless feeling of having been cut off, that this was as much his place as Zarkon's flagship had been. He simply ran a far lower risk of dying at one of these Paladins' hands than he did at his father's mercy.

He finds himself, heart pounding, in the docking bay where his Sincline ship had been staying ever since he had joined with the Paladins after Naxzela. 

It wasn't the first time he'd been down here, to check on his ship, but each time he'd been, he still found himself wondering what would happen if he took his ship and left, whether it was for good or for only a few dobashes. He'd heard stories of how once, someone had taken a Lion - although sometimes accounts differed and said that it was the Princess, and others said that it was one of the Paladins - and that of the remaining Lions had gone out of their way to bring down, in some cases destroy, the vessel and pilots responsible.

After having studied them for as long as he had, Lotor doubted that wanton destruction would be par for the course, especially since they did seem to want him alive, but he would prefer not to test the theory.

Instead, he ran his hand across the paintwork of the Sincline ship itself, remembering when these joints here and those angles there had been but lines on a blueprint that had made sense at the time.

There were already a fair few scratches and imperfections in the paintwork. The Sincline ships hadn't even been  _completed_ yet, and they were already damaged. As if completion was a thing that was  _possible_  still, now. A mark in an awkward place caught his attention, and he sighed, knowing exactly what must have caused it, wondering only how it had escaped his attention for so long.

The door opened just as he'd taken off his gauntlets and rolled up his sleeves to put a sponge in soapy water and start to wipe down the still sooty area, causing him to freeze.

"Ah, I thought I might find you here!"

The royal advisor. Not someone who Lotor had needed to deal with often or much, since his arrival. But the Altean was a semi-constant presence in nearly everything. 

Several dobashes passed, and there were no sounds of movement. The feeling of being watched made his skin crawl.

"You can tell the Paladins that they need not concern themselves with the prospect of me disappearing on them and losing them their valued informant, if that is what you wanted," he said, making every attempt to keep his voice level and not snap.

"What? Oh, no! I just got lost in thought. And memory. Seeing that ship and given what you've said about its counterparts, it reminds me of when Alfor was still building what would become the Voltron Lions." He wanted to say something cutting about Alfor's judgement of character, how it had been  _lacking_ in some areas, but didn't have the energy, instead just scowling as he scrubbed off more dirt, not saying a word. "They're beautiful ships."

At first, he thought Coran was still referring to Voltron. But something in the tone had changed. Lotor should have taken pride in the statement, as he had done in the first stages of the Sincline ships' design and creation, their first test flight, their first test  _fight_. 

But instead, it made him grit his teeth, reminded of how he had aimed for something so high, and crashed - almost literally - with only a single betrayal of trust.

 _Ship._ Singular, now. The Empire had what there was of the head piece, while Acxa, Zethrid and Ezor had the arms. His part was the only one left that he trusted was not in enemy hands right now. 

A dizzying, sickening thought, which brought about an intrusive thought of his own hand coming up to hit him in the face without warning from the rest of his body, but logically, something that he had to assume was at the very least  _possible_. 

"Perhaps this wasn't what you wanted to hear, but... the Paladins do worry about you. You have been gone for several vargas now, after all."

"Forgive me, but I don't see why my absence matters that much, as long as I don't cause trouble, which I've been taking care not to. They don't trust me and I don't trust them, although I can't say it isn't an earned reputation."

On either side, for that matter. He'd used them as a means to an end, but they'd also put themselves in the way of his plans and come after him with such doggedness that his wariness was justified.

"Maybe that's true, but you did still miss two meals, and these Paladins take the idea of helping people very seriously! And no one can fight or run from the Galra empire on an empty stomach! But we can only help us if you let us. All that said of course, if you wanted to just be left safely alone, there's always the people of Gandbraxi, who have a cultural taboo on non-essential social interactions. Rather lonely people, but-"

"Gone."

"I'm sorry?"

Lotor sighed, pointedly not looking back to gauge what the reaction had been, or was going to be, to his next statement. Instead, he kept his attention squarely on the area he'd been trying to clean, resigning himself to the fact that what had been an unmarred area was now clearly not, paintwork discoloured by the jaunt too close to the unstable star.

"Gandbraxi," he said flatly, "was colonised by my father many deca-phoebes ago.  And when they appeared to be... uncooperative, they were enslaved. Some sent to the arenas. Which of course they were unsuitable for. Not quite as extinct as some, but a common enough occurrence."

Enough ticks went by that he finally allowed himself to turn around, only to see the Altean's features drooping.

"It always is hard," the man said, slower and more serious than how he usually said anything, and far more like how Lotor had rarely heard him talk to the princess than any of the others, let alone him, before, "remembering that other civilisations have gone through similar experiences to us. It's so easy to forget and think that there're places that were just never touched, because we haven't seen them yet."

Lotor opened his mouth to ask who Coran meant by 'us', before closing it again upon remembering.

_Of course. Me._

_Allura, the princess. Coran. My mother... and me. The only Alteans - or part, at least - left._

_Unless the witch was hiding something as large as that from me, which I wouldn't put past her._

With one last baleful look at the mark on his ship, Lotor stood, took the bucket and sponges back to where he'd found them, and dried his arms so that he could put his sleeves back into place. 

He followed Coran wordlessly back to the castle's kitchen, listening to the man ramble on about place and adventure after another, carefully keeping his silence on just how many of these places and peoples had also been irrevocably altered. Sometimes, he had often thought, beyond repair. 

But then, he had thought that of the Balmerans, too.

 


End file.
